Wikimedia, the non-profit that supports the community-generated encyclopedia, made headlines last month by saying it was looking into a fight between some of the site’s editors and contributors they accused of “paid advocacy editing” on behalf of clients. Wikipedia’s rules forbid people with conflicts of interest from editing or creating posts. Read More »

Wikipedia co-founder and open-access advocate Jimmy Wales said mainstream media have failed to live up to their rightful role when it comes to access and speech issues. Speaking at Wikimania, Wikipedia’s annual conference held this year in Hong Kong, Wales outlined a new vision for journalism that involves more collaboration with the public and better coverage of how governments monitor individuals.

“The media is not talking about encryption in a coherent way,” Mr. Wales said in his State of the Wiki address, stressing that the press has an unprecedented opportunity to uncover wrongdoing as governments use the Internet to spy on their citizens Read More »

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, takes part in a discussion as part of “The New Media Making Tomorrow” session during the second annual presidential conference in Jerusalem.

Wikimedia Foundation, owner of Wikipedia, said Wednesday that Google has donated $2 million to further develop the popular encyclopedia and other projects.

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, broke the news on Twitter Tuesday, followed by a formal announcement from the nonprofit organization.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in a statement, called Wikipedia “one of the greatest triumphs of the Internet…this vast repository of community-generated content is an invaluable resource to anyone who is online.”

The search giant’s funds will be used on technology projects to help Wikipedia handle its increasing bandwidth and multimedia needs. Read More »